CDN Guidelines
imgix combines sophisticated image manipulation, our proprietary caching infrastructure, and the performance improvements of an industry-leading CDN (content delivery network) into a powerful end-to-end service. Our integrated solution gives us full visibility and flexibility over the entire image pipeline, making the service robust and easy to integrate.
With our global delivery network, your images will get to your users quickly no matter where they are. No additional CDN is required to cache them and provide a great experience to your end users.
Our CDN POP locations are listed in the table below:
| Oceania | Europe | North America | Asia | South America | Africa |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adelaide, AU | Amsterdam, NL | Ashburn, US | Bangkok, TH | Bogota, CO | Cape Town, ZA |
| Auckland, NZ | Brussels, BE | Ashburn (Metro), US | Chennai, IN | Buenos Aires, AR | Ghana, GH |
| Brisbane, AU | Copenhagen, DK | Atlanta, US | Delhi, IN | Curitiba, BR | Johannesburg, ZA |
| Christchurch, NZ | Dublin, IE | Atlanta (Metro), US | Dubai, AE | Fortaleza, BR | |
| Honolulu, US | Frankfurt (Metro), DE | Boston, US | Fujairah Al Mahta, AE | Lima, PE | |
| Melbourne, AU | Frankfurt - Interxion, DE | Calgary, CA | Hong Kong, CN | Rio de Janeiro, BR | |
| Perth, AU | Helsinki, FI | Chicago (Metro), US | Hyderabad, IN | Santiago, CL | |
| Sydney, AU | Lisbon, PT | Columbus, US | Kolkata, IN | Sao Paulo (Metro), BR | |
| Wellington, NZ | London, GB | Dallas (Metro), US | Kuala Lumpur, MY | ||
| Madrid, ES | Denver, US | Manila, PH | |||
| Manchester, GB | Detroit, US | Mumbai, IN | |||
| Marseille, FR | Gainesville, US | Osaka, JP | |||
| Milan, IT | Houston, US | Seoul, KR | |||
| Munich, DE | Kansas City, US | Singapore, SG | |||
| Oslo, NO | Los Angeles (Metro), US | Tokyo, JP | |||
| Palermo, IT | Miami, US | Tokyo (Metro), JP | |||
| Paris (Metro), FR | Minneapolis, US | ||||
| Rome, IT | Montreal, CA | ||||
| Sofia, BG | New York City, US | ||||
| Stockholm, SE | New York City (Metro), US | ||||
| Vienna, AT | Newark, US | ||||
| Palo Alto (Metro), US | |||||
| Phoenix, US | |||||
| Portland, US | |||||
| San Jose, US | |||||
| Seattle (Metro), US | |||||
| St.Louis, US | |||||
| Toronto, CA | |||||
| Vancouver, CA |
If at all possible, we recommend that you not use a third-party CDN on top of the one we provide. Due to the close integration of all components of the imgix service, performance with a third-party CDN may be reduced and some features will not be available.
Having two CDNs participate in each image request will cause initial image renders to take longer, and will have adverse effects on cache hit ratio. Cache hit ratio is the percentage of requests served by the CDN cache versus requests that have to go back to the origin. Adding a third-party CDN increases the chances of an initial miss, because it will not be tuned to match up to our backend systems in the way our CDN is.
Serving Non-Image Assets
We understand that maintaining one CDN for your images and one CDN for all of your other static assets can be complex, time-consuming, and expensive. However, with imgix, you can also serve all of your non-image assets from the same account you use for your images, or even from the same Source. Any asset not supported as an input file type will be automatically served without any transformation. Assets served in this manner are also cached at the imgix CDN edge nodes for faster delivery to your end users and can be purged in the same way you purge image assets.
Non-image assets are served with gzip compression by default for a smaller payload. Customers can also request to have Brotli compression enabled for even more file size savings.
We also offer the option to disable passthroughs for non-image assets, which will prevent them from being served through our CDN and return an error instead. Contact support to enable this feature.
imgix-Specific Feature Impacts
In addition to the speed hit and greater chance of cache misses with a third-party CDN, the advanced imgix features listed below rely on our integration of optimization logic at the edge caches, and are therefore not available when using a third-party CDN in conjunction with imgix.
Automatic Content Negotiation
The imgix Automatic Content Negotiation technology is a convenient way to serve more modern image formats to end users based on their device and browser with no additional programming required. We do all of the heavy lifting of evaluating whether the client supports advanced image formats (WebP, JPEG XR, etc.) up front at our CDN, to convert as necessary to the best-optimized format for that client on the fly.
Client Hints Support
Please Note: Starting with version 67, Chrome no longer supports sending Client Hints to third-parties origins to prevent them from accessing information that might be unavailable to them otherwise. This feature may return at a later date.
Similarly, our support for Client Hints requires our caching logic so it can direct the server to send the best-sized image to a client or browser based on extra information included in the HTTP request headers. Other CDNs don’t provide the logic required to make these features performant, so we are only able to offer them to customers that use the imgix CDN.
Purging
With imgix, you only need a single click or API call to purge an Origin Image and all of its derivatives, and purges typically complete within minutes. Adding a third-party CDN can delay purge times as well as necessitate purging all of your image derivatives separately.
SSL with Custom Domains
imgix offers SSL/TLS by default on all of our standard hostnames (*.imgix.net), and when using our CDN. If you do choose to use a third-party CDN in addition to imgix, you will need to work with that CDN provider to get a certificate for the custom domain you desire, and then point that CDN origin to your source’s imgix.net hostname.